Boyd Gaming,
Las Vegas Reach Land Agreement
To acquire land in support
of the Main Street Station redevelopment project
16 years ago, the city of Las Vegas spent $6.9 million
in public funds, scooping up three small parcels
through eminent domain for a proposed 900-space
parking garage to accommodate the crowds.
But the crowds never came and the original
Main Street Station failed.
In 1993, Boyd Gaming resurrected the bankrupt hotel-casino.
But the land value of the adjacent property over
the years has been reassessed at far less than what
the city paid for it. So much so, Boyd went from
paying more than $27,000 in annual property taxes
in 1994 to about one-quarter of that amount last
year, the Las Vegas City Council was told Wednesday.
City Attorney Brad Jerbic told the council the
city apparently paid too much for the land through
condemnation, as he presented to the board Boyd's
latest offer of $1.68 million to free itself of
the obligation to build the parking garage for which
there no longer is a need.
The council, acting as the redevelopment agency,
voted 7-0 to accept the offer.
It ended a sad chapter in the saga of the city's
efforts to redevelop decaying parts of the downtown
area -- a longtime process that has had its share
of embarrassing failures.
The Main Street Station parking garage fiasco joins
that dubious list that includes the "Minami
Tower" which never materialized on the site
where the new federal building now stands, and the
time in the 1980s when the city used eminent domain
to boot out a disabled service station owner whose
business stood in the way of the Charleston Plaza
Shopping Center.
Ancient history? Perhaps. But Las Vegas Mayor Oscar
Goodman noted prior to voting Wednesday that such
harsh lessons can and should be learned from the
use of eminent domain power.
"The city, in its efforts to redevelop, should
not engage in condemnation of private (property)
for private (interests)," Goodman said. "It's
not good policy."
The Main Street Station parking garage issue dragged
on for so long because the city several years ago
decided to try to build a nearby events center that
would have benefited from such a facility. That
venture also fell through.
During the years that Boyd Group has owned the
land adjacent to the Main Street Station, the city
has received $891,400 as its share of tax money
on the property, the council was told Wednesday.
And the parking garage settlement, Jerbic said,
represents $15 a square foot compared with the going
rate of 91 cents a square foot for similar downtown
property.
Also, as a non-monetary bonus, Boyd Gaming, in
a letter from Chairman Bill Boyd that was presented
to the council Wednesday, agreed to help the city
obtain access to the adjacent 61-acre Union Park
development through the land that had been earmarked
for the garage.
The latest offer was part of the seventh amendment
to the contract that was hammered out with original
Main Street Station developer Bob Snow in 1989,
who at the time redeveloped the failed Park hotel/casino.
In 1993, The Boyd Group bought the closed Main
Street Station and shelled out $45 million to renovate
it. The move, in effect, bailed out city officials
who were under public scrutiny for having sunk taxpayer
dollars into a venture that critics at the time
had labeled a potential failure given Snow's lack
of gaming experience.
Snow, at the time, said he was not so much concerned
with the gaming operation as he was with making
the Main Street Station a showplace, complete with
antiques he had collected over the years as operator
of a non-gaming resort in Florida. He also proposed
a huge "festival marketplace" shopping
venue in conjunction with the large planned parking
garage.
But the festival marketplace, like the garage,
was never built. Before that deal collapsed, however,
the city was in the process of obtaining adjacent
property through eminent domain for those projects
and to build the Ogden underpass.
In 1992 the city paid $6.97 million for the land
to close a court-challenged condemnation in which
the Union Pacific Railroad was forced to sell the
property to make way for construction of the festival
marketplace, according to Clark County assessor's
office records.
Two years later, the city and Boyd Gaming entered
into an agreement calling for the company to build
the 900-space parking garage in return for obtaining
the property next to the then-closed Main Street
Station casino that Boyd had purchased. The resort
still operates today as a Boyd hotel/casino.
In 2002, the council again changed the agreement
so that instead of building a parking garage Boyd
Gaming could provide land for a proposed hockey
arena. Boyd put $1.5 million into an account for
the arena, which was then being called the Las Vegas
Events Center. The company then spent $3 ,000 developing
plans for the proposed arena.
The payment offered Wednesday represents the remainder
of those funds plus another $500,000 from Boyd.
The Sun has previously reported that much of that
money has been earmarked for a planned downtown
performing arts center.
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